Meh. So, four full weeks into my summer, I was curious about my size. Not my weight; I'm horribly aware of the fact that I haven't lost any weight for the entire month. What I was wondering was, what size clothes am I currently wearing? I haven't done any clothes shopping in quite some time (ignoring the outfit I bought for my mother's memorial service, at which point I was not paying any attention whatsoever to what size the clothes were). So I went to a department store and tried a few things on.

I know the largest size pants I have ever purchased were size 16, although at some point I probably should have been wearing larger ones than that. Disappointingly enough, despite a loss of almost 40 lbs in the past year and a half, I am only down to a size 12. I was able to get into a pair of size 10 pants, but they pulled rather tight across my hips and butt, and my lovehandles lopped depressingly over the sides of the waistband. Ick.

As far as tops go, I am still firmly into the XL range. My biggest (haha) problems are my wide shoulders, my big upper arms, and my, uh, bosom. Let's just say that what God graced me with has been seriously augmented by my eating habits over the years. I'm HUGE up top. I know there are girls out there who pray and pray for bigger cup sizes than what they've been given, but I'm here to tell you that there is a point where it becomes seriously unattractive. These do not belong in a magazine; they belong to a fat person. Eew. Anyway, I'm thoroughly disappointed in the styles of tops that are currently popular. With a plunging neckline, fluttery sleeves, and Empire waists with flared bottoms, my arms look flabby (which they are, but why accentuate it), my bosom looks disgustingly huge (which it is, again...), and I look pregnant (which I am not, so why lead anyone on). Yuck.

So, unless I get a move on and actually lose some weight (and tone what I've got so I'm not quite so horribly jiggly and flabby and lumpy), I really won't need to buy much in the way of clothes this fall for school. I've got a couple pairs of pants that fit, and I've got plenty of XL tops (not too stylish, but I'm not, generally, so it's no big deal).

Clearly, however, even if I lose some weight, my days of buying anything in the juniors department are over (and really have been for some time); the stuff just isn't cut to accomodate me, whether I lose or not.

Well, I've been given a pretty good dose of reality; let's see what I do with it.

I feel like a broken record (or skipping CD, for those of you who are too young to remember): FRUSTRATED. Another week of working out pretty well, another week of absolutely no weight loss. Oh, I did have one morning where I was actually below 180, but I promptly popped right back up the next day. Ended the week at 181. So, basically, another wasted week.

I'm beyond frustrated. I've been basically stuck at this weight since March of LAST YEAR. That's right, March of 2006. I had one week last summer where I dipped down to my lightest weight, but pretty much other than that, I'm totally stagnant. I'm really starting to question if it's even worth continuing to try to lose weight. Heck, I've lost over 37 lbs since we started this back on Halloween of 2005, and really about 45 lbs from what I suspect was my heaviest weight. I should be happy with that, and proud of that, and to be completely honest it would be a lot easier if I'd just quit. I know how to stay at this weight; I've done it for over a year.

But I'm still so unhappy. I really wanted to get down to around 150 lbs. I really wanted to get below a size 10 (I'm not sure I'm even in a size 10 right now; I haven't bought any clothes in a while, and most of my pants right now are 12, although some of them seem a little loose but it might not be enough to get into 10s). But my summer is slowly creeping away, and I haven't made any progress at all. I mean, school got out on the 24th of May, and I was done with work on the 30th. It's now June 24, and I have absolutely nothing to show for the past four weeks. While watching shows like The Biggest Loser are very inspiring, they also piss me off, because I'm watching these people losing 10 and sometimes 20 lbs each week, over and over again, and I've lost nothing.

Obviously, consistent exercise and "watching what I eat" (right, watching it go from the plate to my mouth) isn't enough. I clearly need to make a modification regarding my diet. But this is where it gets very difficult. I am not good at cutting items out of my diet completely. Those tend to become the things that I snap and binge on. But I'm also not good at controlling my portion sizes. I've heard people recommend a variety of different things to control portion size, like using a particular plate that you fill up and you only eat what fits on the plate, or using a particular ladle or spoon to control the size of the portion, or getting one of those divided plates for picnics and filling the largest space with salad and the other spaces with whatever else you're eating. All of those sound like good ideas, but they aren't practical for eating anywhere other than home. So, you're gonna take your divided plate and your ladle to Outback Steakhouse and load up? Just doesn't seem realistic.

So, what can I do?

1. I can keep eating the same way and drastically increase my workouts. This works OK for the summer (although it will make it a little harder to get some stuff done at home because I'll be spending more time at the gym), but it won't work during the school year, when I have a limited amount of time I can be at the gym. This might be a good plan to lose the weight, but I'll need to come up with a different plan to keep it off.

2. I can try one of those portion-control methods, or at least come up with my own method. While this is obviously one that I really should do, I don't really know how to do it. I've never known how to control my portions, short of purchasing everything premade and prepackaged, like those 100-calorie packs of chips and cookies and the 100-calorie things of yogurt. How DO you control portions? How DO you stop yourself from loading up? I have no idea how to do this.

3. I can try to restrict my diet and cut some things out that I know I shouldn't be eating. I know breads are loaded with calories. I know pasta is packed with carbs. I know red meat is much fattier than chicken and fish. I know that desserts have sugar and fat in them. But I don't know how to live without them. That sounds incredibly stupid, and incredibly selfish; I have this crazy image of some little kid in Somalia looking at me like I'm completely insane as he slowly starves to death. But it has been proven that if you completely cut something out of your diet, that item is the one that will probably lead to your falling off the wagon at some point. Since I do have a binging personality, I'm afraid to cut things out completely.

4. I can keep working out and eating the same way I have been, but try a supplement like Lean System 7 or Stacker 2 or Hydroxycut. Again, this is one of those things that could work in the short-term, but it really doesn't have a realistic chance to work in the long-term. I don't tolerate things like ephedra very well (tried the old Metabolife long ago, and it made me super-twitchy), and I don't know that the other non-ephedra stimulants will work any better. I already take medication for high blood pressure, and I don't know what effect a supplement could have on that. And what happens when I stop taking it? Do I just gain the weight back?

Clearly, only two of these options are really viable. I can either dramatically increase my workouts, or I can try to figure out how to eat less. I know a lot of people out there keep food journals. If you do, how do you do it? Do you set yourself a calorie goal for the day, and figure out your calories as you go? Do you just track your eating habits and not actually count the calories, but perhaps track your weight loss and gain for each day, adjusting your eating to that? Or do you just write down everything you eat to shame yourself into eating less? I know CalorieKing.com is a good website to help track calories, but I don't know if calorie-counting is what I want to do. It takes a lot of time to figure out how many calories you are taking in (especially if you are making your own meals--either you measure everything or you just take a guess as to how much you are eating), and it requires you to stick to it. Do you have to carry your journal with you everywhere? Do you write everything down right away, or wait until later? There's just a lot to think about when you are doing a food journal.

Well, I've got a few things to think about. Whatever I'm going to do, I need to get started on it. I've already wasted about a month of my summer, and time is running out.

It's over. And I am so let-down! It wasn't a very good series finale at all. Sort of stole a page from Star Trek: TNG. Not that they haven't done that before, but they didn't put much of a novel spin on it. Of course, it didn't really tie up any plot lines, because they are making two made-for-tv movies to finish things up. Didn't even have a great ending; I sort of expected bringing in some old characters to tie things up, but they only really brought in one, mostly for tearjerker points (and while I love the Asgaard, I'm not going to cry over Thor, although he was pretty cool). No O'Neill, no Hammond ("of Texas"), no nothin'. They just went through the gate, as usual, with just a few "gosh, it's been fun" kind of lines. Not even as cool as the end of ST:TNG, with its poker game with everybody participating. Oh well. Anyway, at least one character is making a crossover to Stargate: Atlantis, and I'm sure other characters will show up from time to time. But dammit, I'm gonna miss 'em. It just won't be the same.

*sigh* Why do the best shows always have to end?

Continuing to struggle. Went out of town on a kayaking weekend, and was very disappointed to not lose any weight. As a matter of fact, I actually gained a couple pounds. The exercise on a kayaking weekend is undeniable (great upper body and cardio workout), and not eating while on the river is pretty good too, but we've started really cooking in our campsite, you know, dutch oven pizza and cobblers, eggs and bacon and french toast and burgers and ranch potatoes and...mmm, gettin' hungry. Not good. Anyway, as we've refined our camp cooking abilities, we've started eating more food on these trips than we ever did in the past. Add in the eating out on the way to and from the camping trip, and it gets ugly in a hurry. Even kayaking several hours a day for a couple days, I ended up apparently not burning as many calories as I took in. Bummer.

Thankfully, one day (yesterday) of being better about eating and working out and I was back down to 180 this morning, but I've had absolutely no net loss whatsoever. I've only got eight weeks or so left to lose some weight. At this point, I'll be happy for ANY loss, not necessarily a whole 20 lbs. I mean, I'd love to lose a full 20 lbs in the next 8 weeks, but I'll just be happy to be below my lightest weight, 173. Really, that just means I need to lose 1 pound each week. That, I think I can do. I think.

Frustrated. Despite the fact that I worked out pretty well last week, I did not eat that well. We ate out several times, and I did not chose wisely. Large portions, lots of stuff I didn't need. So, despite all the working out of last week, I lost nothing. My weight stayed mostly flat all week long, with a few peaks and no valleys. Last night we went out to a steak place that is well-known for their desserts, which is why we went there in the first place. So of course we both got dessert, and although I did not finish my dessert, I still cleaned my plate of everything else.

I'm watching reruns of The Biggest Loser wistfully, wishing I could be in that situation, where there are no bad snacks lying around, where there is a personal trainer there to kick my ass into moving faster, where there is $250,000 of motivation added to the motivation of looking and feeling better.

I really don't know what to do. I need to make a number of changes to what I'm doing. I really need to try and switch to more veggies and a lot less meat. I need to add some variety to my workouts. Instead of spending the whole cardio time on the elliptical or the treadmill, I need to spend equal time on the elliptical, the treadmill, and the stationary bike. I need to push myself harder and harder on the exercises that I have been doing for a long time.

I spent some time the other day looking up information about willpower (namely, how to get some). I got really mad reading one website that said it isn't really willpower that is anyone's problem, because despite how we feel, we all really do have willpower. Instead, the website suggested that people just need to find the one thing that motivates them more than anything else. Well, fabulous. So, instead of needing willpower, I need motivation. F&^% lot of good that does me. So, how do I get motivation? Since apparently the facts that I hate being fat, that I want to look better for my husband, and that I want to give myself a better chance of surviving some of the genetic health issues I may be facing are not enough to motivate me to lose weight. I'm even trying to bribe myself with shopping (I can't buy any new clothes until I lose at least ten more pounds, and I only have until school starts to do it). How do I do this?

My ultimate goal is 150 lbs. I am teetering at 180 right now (actually I was 183 this morning, but like I said, I ate way too much last night, and I was dressed when I weighed, so I suspect I'll be back at 180 tomorrow morning). If I could get that by the end of October, it would be two years since we started this little adventure.

I would really like to be 160 when school starts in mid-August, but that might be asking too much. I've got about 9 weeks (a little more until the first day of school, a little less until the first day the teachers have to report back for inservice). So that means I've got a little more than 20 lbs to lose. A very stubborn 20 lbs, from the look of things. I don't know that I can make it, but I'm still going to try. It's just frustrating.

Well, I tried out my new mp3 player, and I've gotta say, it was pretty cool. It is a SwiMP3 player from Finis. The premise is simple--in order to get the best sound underwater, it relies on bone conduction rather than sound waves traveling through air, since your ears aren't in air while you swim. It's the same concept that causes you to hear your own voice differently than others do (it sounds so weird when you hear yourself recorded and played back), because you hear it through your head as well as through the air. The speakers actually rest on the bones of your head right in front of your ear, and the sound waves travel through your head and vibrate the workings of your ear. So the sound is good underwater.

Anyway, that's the way it is supposed to work. That's definitely what I was hoping for when I purchased the item. Since I want to make swimming one of my major workouts each day, I decided to try it to make the laps a little less boring. $199 plus shipping. It arrived pretty quickly via UPS, and I tried it out yesterday. It's got a little waterproof bud in between the speakers, where you plug in the USB cord to load the music. It loads really easily. The only downside is that it does not play iTunes' proprietary format, so any music I've actually purchased I'll have to convert before I can use them. Oh well. Most of my music has been, shall we say, procured another way (that's not to say illegally, necessarily).

So, I got the speakers hooked to my goggle straps, figured out the controls pretty easily (although I'll have to memorize where all the buttons are and what each one does), and ducked my head under the water. Here are my observations:

1. As long as you are underwater, the sound is really good. I didn't have to fiddle with the volume much to find a good level. And the music quality is pretty impressive.

2. Even if my head was above water, as long as my ear was full of water, it still sounded pretty good. That means freestyle, backstroke, and butterfly (since I breathe to the side) all sound good.

3. The only time it didn't sound great was when my head was above water with no water in my ears. With my head up, the sound is a little tinny, like my old crappy headphones on my old Sony walkman years ago. I could still hear it, but the sound quality did definitely change. So breaststroke was a little disappointing, with a sort of ooo-WHEE-ooo-WHEE-ooo quality to the music as my head would rise and fall above and below the water level.

4. It kept me from fiddling with my goggles. I usually take them off and put them on multiple times during a workout, or rest them on my forehead for a while. I left them on the whole time.

5. What I didn't do was use my kickboard at all, and I can certainly see a problem or two there. I usually take my goggles off entirely to rest my head (I get headaches really easily). So I wouldn't hear the music obviously if I took them off. Also, the sound is better underwater, and when kicking with the kickboard I keep my head above water. I'll have to think this part through. I can always kick without the kickboard and keep my head in the water most of the time. But it does change things up a bit.

6. The speakers didn't get disrupted during any of the strokes, flipturns, or anything like that. I didn't try diving, but I don't usually dive in anyway. No big problem there. And it was easy enough to slide the speakers back a bit from my ears so I could talk to someone out of the water and hear them.

So I'm pretty pleased with the SwiMP3 player. It worked pretty well, and it will keep me from getting bored while I swim. I'll sort out whatever bugs I come across. But if you swim a lot, give one a try!

Well, yesterday went pretty well. I went to the gym in the morning, swam a mile, and then had to abandon my plan of lifting weights (waldrobe malfunction; well, really, I forgot an item of my wardrobe). So I went home and got some housekeeping and business stuff taken care of. Then I went back to the gym and got an hour of cardio. I'm a little sore today, but not too bad. I managed to eat pretty well yesterday too, which brought my weight down from the 184 I registered the other day to this morning's weigh-in of 180.6. Much better, but I still need to get away from the 180's. Heck, I need to get away from the 170's and 160's too. Ultimately, I'd like to be somwhere between 150-155.

Anyway, I haven't gone to the gym yet today because I'm waiting for the mail and the UPS guy to arrive. I'm especially excited about the UPS delivery; I'm going to try out an mp3 player that works in the water. It's not a traditional mp3 player; it works through bone conduction rather than traditional headphones. It clips to goggle straps so it doesn't get in the way while swimming. I'm pretty curious and I really hope it works well, because it will make it much easier to swim longer without getting completely bored.

So, this afternoon the plan is to go to the gym and swim for about an hour, then dry off and go inside, meet my husband, and do cardio or lift. I may also go for a walk or run coming up here around lunchtime, although it's pretty warm outside and I may not be happy with the decision to do it. Oh well.

So, I feel like I've got a good plan. It's all going to come down to whether or not I can stick with the eating better and the exercising more. I really hope I can.